The Code and the Way

The Big Three

The Firebird: The Creator of Mystery: I remain humble and seek to be corrected.
The Weaver: The Keeper of tales: I live my story and tell that story without hesitation.
The Great Serpent: The Doer of Deeds: I do what matches my morals and ignore what others may think of me.

The Firebird

The Firebird is the Mystery at the center of existence. It represents the fractal unfolding Mystery that surrounds the pursuit of knowledge. And so the Code of the Firebird is to remain humble and seek to be corrected. The Firebird expects you to acknowledge the limits of your knowledge even as you pursue greater understanding.

Remain Humble

There is nothing to be gained from arrogance. Confidence arises naturally from competence. But arrogance is a weakness that harms the one who embraces it.

“Even though you know a thousand things, ask the man who knows one.”
Turkish Proverb

One of the great dangers is that you don’t know what you don’t know. What we don’t know is often invisible to us. This invisibility can threaten us. And so, it behooves us to remain humble. Accept that you do not know what you do not know in many cases. Accept that the vastness of experience is a mystery to you. Act with the knowledge that you may be wrong.

Now this doesn’t mean that everything you know is equally likely to be wrong. The more you learn, the more you will understand about the limits of your knowledge. But you will never be right. Everyone is wrong, always wrong. The goal is to become progressively less wrong.

Seek to Be Corrected

Too often we seek to appear correct. We seek to appear correct regardless of whether we are correct. And we do this because the pain of admitting error causes us to feel shame. But there is no shame in admitting error. There is shame in perpetuating error. Because perpetuating error means that the damage from the error will continue to grow. There is shame in hiding error, because the error will persist. But you know this.

This is the trick. Start by admitting your ignorance. Do this before you make any claims. Tell those with whom you speak the limits of your knowledge and ask them to correct you if they notice you making mistakes. If you bring it up first, the sting is removed. This is the secret. Take control of the errors by claiming them first. Nobody can shame you for something you own proudly. When somebody points out an error, say, “Oh I hadn’t noticed that. Well spotted. Thank you!”

Praise those who correct you, and make the moment about their wisdom in spotting the error. Suddenly you are not the subject of shame, you are magnanimous and polite. Your error is seen as a reasonable mistake, and the correction becomes a team success. And this is how it should be. Lean in to the collaborative nature of correction. Seek to be corrected, because when you are corrected you are improved.

Shame is a venom that will burn your soul, but you can defang the serpent that carries the venom by acknowledging it without fear.

The Weaver

The Weaver is the teller of tales, the keeper of stories, the spinner of webs. The Weaver pushes us to embrace our greater story, and not to submit to the oppressive beliefs of others.

Live your Story

You were not made to be small. You exist, among the infinite number of possible people who could have been born, you were born. You are here. In a vast a cold universe, you are a light in the infinite darkness. You were not meant to be small. You are a light. You were meant to shine.

Empire seeks to dim our lights, to steal our flame and use it to fuel its mass suicide attempt. You serve only the Locust King when you hide your light. You serve only the oppressor when you keep yourself small. You were not meant to be small. You were not meant to dim your light.

This might be hard to believe. Who am I? You may ask. I’m just a nobody. I’m not special.

This is nonsense.

The known universe is over fourteen billion light years across. And in that vastness, we have found no other planets which support life. There likely is life, but the majority of the cosmos is cold and silent. And here, you are light and heat and sound. You stand as a rebuttal to entropy. The flame will go out eventually. The song will end. But you are here, now, to carry the flame and sing the song. If you were not worthy of life, you would not be alive. If you were not worthy of having a story, you would not exist.

You are here. You have been given a brief time upon this earth. Use it. Tell your story. Sing your song. Carry your flame.

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”
Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder

Tell your Story

When your body breathes its last breath, people will tell your tale. You will be remembered when you are gone. And this remembrance is the only afterlife we are guaranteed to receive. So what will be your afterlife? It will be determined by how you lived. It will be determined by what you said and what you did.

You must live your story, but you must also tell it. You have allies who will aid you in the pursuit of your story. But those allies cannot help you if they do not know that it is your story which will stir their heart. You must tell them. When somebody asks you what you wish to be when you grow up, tell them. If they scoff, that just means they are not the allies you seek. Move on. When somebody asks what you want to do with yourself, tell me. If they tell you that’s impossible, thank them and continue on unconcerned. People do the impossible every day. And the willing slave imagines much to be impossible when it is only difficult.

We want difficult. Good stories do not come from easy goals. Good stories are not told from trip to the grocery store. Tell your story. And be sure that what you tell is worth hearing. Tell your story. And be sure that what you tell stirs your soul. There is no story worth telling in deeds that do not inspire you.

Make your story worth telling. Tell your story. Find your allies. Ignore those who would hold him back. Let them be small. Let them be petty. This is not their story. This is your story.

The Great Serpent

The Great Serpent embodies ambition and goal seeking, it is the drive to be more and do more than one currently can do. The Great Serpent emplores us to seek challenges and seek to grow and stretch beyond our boundaries.

Acting in Line with Morality

It is easy to believe something. It is hard to act in support of your beliefs. Everyone imagines themselves a better person than they act in real life. Do not feel ashamed for this. Life is a challenge. You will always fall short. But the attempt is what matters. As you accept your beliefs into your identity, choose to act on those beliefs. What you act on, is the measure by which others will judge. And, more important, your actions will be what you remember of yourself when your justifications have faded from your memory.

Swear an oath to yourself. Swear and oath to the unborn elders who will come after you. Swear an oath to the Whisperers of the land which keeps you alive. Swear to not just believe morals, but to act upon them. Swear to follow those beliefs, to walk them as a path. Know that you will stumble on that path. Know that you will fall on that path. And know that you will get back up and continue walking the path once more.

Do not let others choose your path for you. Do not walk a path because it is easy. Do not walk a path because others pushed you on the way. Walk the path that embodies the story you wish to tell for yourself. Walk the path that makes you feel as though your life has meaning, or it won’t. Pick something worth fighting for, or you will surrender your life without a fight.

Empire wants your life. Empire wants you complicit in its crimes. Empire wants you dependent upon it and compromised by your affiliation with it.

But you can choose your own path. Walk away from Empire. Walk a path which lets you face yourself in the mirror. Be the person you wish to be in the stories told after you are gone. And be that person everyday. Be that person when no one is watching. Because there is always somebody watching. You are watching. And you are the only watcher who matters.

Ignoring the Opinions of Others

People will tell you to stay small. People will tell you to stay safe. People will make all sorts of excuses for inaction. They will justify cowardice and procrastination. They will tell you to put your energy into things which do not benefit you and which keep your flame dim. If you listen to others, your flame will sputter and die and you will never tell your story.

People will make you a coward. They will convince you to compromise your morals rather than doing what you know is right. They will dither and delay in the face of the apocalypse. They will convince you that the oncoming train is a wonderful light at the end of the tunnel. People are socially plastic, they are easily influenced by peer pressure and social proof. People side with the majority. People wait to see who will win. People will try to play both sides.

Ignore the opinions of others. Unless you are seeking advice from them specifically and you trust their opinion. Unsolicited advice is of no interest to you. The judgment of others is irrelevant. You are the one who must judge. Remember that you are a primate with a brain easily swayed by others. And then ask yourself, have I acted in alignment with my morals? Ask yourself, am I living my story? Am I telling my story? And if you are doing those things, ignore any dissent and proceed.

The Three Founders

First Mother: Motivations. The underlying core which motivate the rest of the Code and the Way.
First Hero: Guiding Lights. The central values which guide the actions of all who follow the Code and the Way.
The Dreamwalker: Conduct. The etiquette that raise civility of the followers of the Code and the Way

First Mother: Motivations

Survival: Flight from Glass Tower.
Autarky: Walk the Witch Road.
Sustainability: Founding the First Tribe.

Survival: Flight from Glass Tower

One’s own self defense takes priority, ones own comfort is not essential. Vengeance is not defense. Deterrence is defense. Survival takes priority over everything except the code of the Firebird, the Weaver, and the Serpent.

We do not differentiate between survival as in finding food and shelter, and survival as in surviving the attack of a bandit or enemy. Survival is survival. And you have a right to survive. You do not have to survive in the right way. If somebody seeks to harm you, you are not required to defend yourself with honor. People think that they must survive in the appropriate way. But scavenging food from the dumpster will still feed your hunger. Gouging an assailant’s eye with your thumb will still protect you from harm. You do not have to survive the right way. Your survival takes priority over nearly everything else.

But be aware of what survival is not. Survival is not comfort. Survival is having enough food, it is not having your favorite food. Survival is shelter, it is not a mansion. Survival is not comfort. Survival is not privilege. Survival is about essentials. Once you move beyond essentials, your actions cease to be justified by the idea of survival. Likewise survival is not vengeance or anger. Gouge our an eye to escape an attacker, yes. But not in retribution. Not to punish. That is not survival.

Survival is all about your right to the essentials. Empire will attempt to lie to you in two way with regards to survival. Empire will tell you that the privilege of the Nobility is necessary survival. Empire will tell you that your survival is actually greed for privileges you don’t need. Empire exists to funnel resources away from the many and into the hands of the few. And Empire will lie and contradict itself to achieve this. But you still have a right to those things you need to survive.

Autarky: Walk the Witch Road

Take responsibility for one’s own actions. Do nothing to others you would object to having done to you. I judge myself and do not allow myself to be enslaved by the judgments of others.

Your mind is not your own. Human beings are socially plastic. We are easily tricked. We are easily influenced. We are easily manipulated. We fall victim to peer pressure. We make irrational decisions based on leftover biology from before the Permian extinction. We are a bundle of instincts and assumptions we can’t easily unpack. To suggest that we are responsible for our decisions is ludicrous on the face of it.

But if we do not accept responsibility, then we cannot gain any control over our lives. Yes, you are easily lied to. Yes, you are easily manipulated. Yes, your mind is often working against your best interests because of the leftover detritus of evolution. And if you decide to accept that as your fate, then you are a victim. And doing this is easy. Just decide to believe that it’s not your fault. Just believe that nothing is your fault.

The secret is that responsibility and guilt are not real things. They are contrived ideas. They do not exist outside the Shadowlands, outside the stories we tell, outside our collective skulls. There is no responsibility to be found in the savannas of Africa or the steppes of Mongolia. There is no guilt amongst the Sakura trees in Japan or the red cedars of western Canada. These are cultural objects. They have no life outside of the life we give them. Each of us must decide what we accept responsibility for, if anything. You are not responsible for anything, unless you decide you are responsible. Others may try to hold you responsible, and you may experience the consequence of those attempts. But despite this, you still decide if you are responsible for anything.

We recommend that you hold yourself responsible for all of your own actions. And we recommend that you hold yourself responsible for none of the actions of others. You surrender the control of anything you decide is not your responsibility. So if you decide that you are not responsible for yourself or your actions, you surrender yourself to those willing to take control of you. If you accept responsibility for others, then you will feel obligated to try and control them. And trying to control others is an exercise in frustration for the both of you. You do not have absolute control over yourself. You do not fully understand your own body or mind. But you have more control over yourself than anything else. You have more insight into yourself than anybody else.

Take responsibility for yourself. Not because you are guilty. Do not accept guilt, accept responsibility. Not because you are to blame. Do not accept blame, accept responsibility. Because once you accept responsibility, you take control.

Sustainability: Founding the First Tribe

Aim for small scale local solutions, avoid involving official organizations. Aim for solutions that restore rather than deplete local resources. I shall seek resiliency rather than efficiency. I shall seek redundancy rather than seeking to maximize output.

Empire like top down solutions. Empire like large solutions. Empire seeks to grow and to turn everything into more Empire. Empire like bureaucracy. Empire like laws and rules and decrees and orders. Empire likes what it can control. Empire likes the assembly line. Empire likes marching and order and monotony. If you aim for large scale solutions, you will need to use the Empire’s tools and the Empire’s bureaucracy. And if you accept the Empire’s bureaucracy, you accept the Empire’s rule and the Empire’s rules. If you aim for large scale solutions, you will need uniform answers that do not account for local variables and individual circumstances.

So do not aim for large solutions. Do not aim for uniform answers. Even this book should be adapted to your local circumstances. Seek local solutions that use local resources, but which do not deplete those local resources. If you need external resources, you are dependent upon those people from outside your community who can provide those resources. And those external sources are inevitably part of Empire.

And do not seek to maximize results. Do not seek to maximize production. Do not seek to constantly grow. Seek resilience. Seek to build redundant systems, so that no single failure will leave you helpless. Do not rely upon any one strategy, lest you become dependent upon a brittle system that will shatter when the conditions change.

Stay small. Empire hates small. Empire cannot infiltrate when everyone knows each other. Stay local. Empire loves supply lines and the dependencies that supply lines bring. Empire can control the lines and use them to hang its citizens. Stay redundant and resilient. Empire loves to maximize production, and the resilient and the redundant runs opposite to maximum production.

If you do this, you are free. You are free of Empire.

First Hero: Guiding Lights

Consent: The Bargain with the Great Serpent.
Action: Slaying the Beast..

Consent: The Bargain with the Great Serpent.

Respect the autonomy and decisions of others. Ask rather than coerce. I shall respect the autonomy of others and their ability to give or refuse consent.

The Empire does not ask. The Empire has no regard for consent. You are a subject of the Empire by birth or conquest. You are not giving a say in the matter. Empire cannot have an honest conversation about consent, because when people have a choice, they do not choose Empire. Empire has tattooed slaves to prevent them from being having a choice in their status. Empire has bound serfs to the land, forbidding travel to prevent them from having a choice in their labor. Empire forbids the common folk from reading or owning weapons, to prevent them from fighting to better themselves or learning about the injustices foisted on them. Empire opposes consent. And as long as you live within Empire, consent will always struggle to survive.

The Free Tribes prioritize consent. We do not coerce. We ask. People are allowed to refuse. This does not mean that we ask people nicely to stop when they invade with spears and lances. This does not mean that we kindly ask abusers to stop. This does not mean that we ask people not steal from us or trespass against the tribe. When others transgress, we defend ourselves and we defend the community. This is not the same as respecting consent.

Consent means that when you state your case, you rely upon the strength of your argument, not blackmail or leverage. This means that if somebody wishes to abstain from your suggested course of action, you honor that. You respect when people withdraw consent. You respect when people change their mind. This is the free tribe way. We do not need to grow without end. And as such, we want only those members who wish to be part of the free tribes. No member of the free tribe is forcibly inducted. Children must choose to become a member of the tribe. Nobody is forced to participate. No member has authority over others. No minority calls the shots. We are a collective of free peoples, and we do not force others to walk as we do.

Action: Slaying the Beast.

Once the Path is clear, Take the action. The best thing to do in a crisis is the right thing, the second best thing is the wrong thing, the worst thing is nothing. Nothing gets done if I do nothing.

We make more wrong turns standing still than walking forward. Nothing moves until you do. You must take action if you wish action to occur. Without action, you are a ship becalmed with no rudder. You will drift through life and be at the mercy of the actions of everyone around you. You must expend energy to bend the story to your will, or you will remain a minor character of no importance and will become the victim of those more active.

This does not mean that you should act without thinking. But it does mean that you should not overthink things. This means that you take action and accept that action may lead to results you do not want. When this happens, you adjust your actions. And then you take more action. Act. Assess. Correct course. Act again.

The Dreamwalker: Conduct

Respect: Talking with the Firebird.
Compassion: The Rescue of the Last Princess.

Respect: Talking with the Firebird

I shall treat all people in the manner with which I wish to be treated unless they have otherwise proven themselves unworthy of that respect. Be polite at all times. Ignore my own speculation on what others may think of me. What others may think of me is none of my business.

Respect is a starting point. Begin with respect. This may seem obvious, but the Empire likes to deal from a position of such power that respect is unnecessary. We have all heard stories about rich people abusing people with less money, or people in subservient positions. We have all heard stories about bosses and employers and politicians who abuse the authority the Hungry Empire has gifted them. Respect is not assumed in the empire. But respect is assumed by defenders of the flame. If you walk the Freepath, you start by assuming the person you meet to be worthy of a base level of respect. This means politeness and manners. This means assuming good intentions as a reasonable starting point. It does not mean being a doormat or ignoring red flags.

In addition, this means ignoring speculation on how others may perceive you- as much as is possible. Do not allow such speculation to get into your head. If you follow your values, then you have nothing for which to apologize. Speculating on whether somebody else likes or doesn’t like you behind your back is irrelevant. What other people think of you is none of your business. It is also counterproductive. Have respect for yourself and your values and do not bend your behavior to people please at the expense of abandoning your values. This does not mean that you ignore when people treat you badly. This does not mean that you ignore when people lie to you. This does not mean that you ignore when you discover that people have said one thing to you and another thing to somebody else. It means that you do not speculate, and you do not compromise your values for popularity. It doesn’t work, and it degrades you in the process of not working.

Compassion: The Rescue of the Last Princess

Consider the well being of others in your actions. Apologize and make amends for missteps. I shall practice compassion wherever reasonable.

This is no point in causing harm without reason. The world is full enough with pain and suffering. Do not unnecessarily add to that pain and suffering through your actions. This does not mean that you cannot defend yourself if it hurts your attacker. This does not mean that you cannot defend others if it would harm their assaillant. This does not mean that you cannot cause necessary pain to assist, such as harming somebody while dragging them from a burning car.

What this means is that you do not cause pain or suffering without reason and forethought. This means that you take reasonable care to consider the impact of your actions upon others. And that you consider that impact before you begin.

It also means that you apologize readily for missteps and make amends for missteps. Once more, this does not mean that you are to be a doormat. This does not mean that you have to apologize for everything or whenever asked. Apologize for what you have done. You are not required to apologize for things for which you are not responsible. You are not required to make amends for imagined slights or hurt feelings. It means that when you cause harm, you make a genuine effort to repair that harm, or to otherwise make up for the harm you caused.

Avoid seeking revenge. Avoid taking pleasure in the misfortune of others. You are human. These things are unavoidable. But recognise that as being not helpful. Such feelings do not aid you in any way beyond temporary satisfaction. Seek to be a person described as firm but fair. Seek to be seen as a nice person, but not a wimpy person. Find strength in compassion and openness.